The king asked, “Did Joab put you up to all this?”

The woman answered. “As you live, my lord the king, no one can turn to the right or left from all my lord the king says. Yes, your servant Joab is the one who gave orders to me; he told your servant exactly what to say.

The servant said to him, “Suppose the woman is unwilling to follow me to this land? Should I have your son go back to the land you came from?”

Boaz asked his servant who was in charge of the harvesters, “Whose young woman is this?”

The servant answered, “She is the young Moabite woman who returned with Naomi from the land of Moab.

The woman came over to Saul, and she saw that he was terrified and said to him, “Look, your servant has obeyed you. I took my life in my hands and did what you told me to do.

At Thebez, who struck Abimelech son of Jerubbesheth? Didn’t a woman drop an upper millstone on him from the top of the wall so that he died? Why did you get so close to the wall?’—then say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.’”

Instead, he called to the servant who waited on him: “Throw this woman out and bolt the door behind her!”

Then the woman said, “Please, may your servant speak a word to my lord the king?”

“Speak,” he replied.

When he had come near her, the woman asked, “Are you Joab?”

“I am,” he replied.

“Listen to the words of your servant,” she said to him.

He answered, “I’m listening.”